


A clean slate and buried war crimes

by Builder



Series: Jonestown [7]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of Child Pornography, Mentions of sex trafficking, Mission Fic, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, POV Natasha Romanov, Psychological Trauma, Romance, Sickfic, Vomiting, and I seriously mean mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 21:10:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16183250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/pseuds/Builder
Summary: If she was a normal person with a normal bad day at the office, she’d tell Jess about it.  Maybe they’d go running.  Or grab takeout.  Or get stoned and make love in front of stupid daytime TV.  None of the options will work because nothing about the situation is normal.Nat can’t lean on Jess; she only knows how to pedal in tandem.  If a person around her, even a friend or a partner, vanishes, she has to keep going alone.  It’s how she was raised, to be fully self-sufficient, but not independent.  She isn’t supposed to make her own choices.  She isn’t supposed to care.Bile rises in Nat’s throat again.  She isn’t supposed to be doing this, either.  She swallows hard and murmurs, “Sorry.”





	A clean slate and buried war crimes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xxx_cat_xxx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xxx_cat_xxx/gifts).



> This is a prompt from tumblr. Find me @builder051

It’s not the kind of mission Nat likes to talk about.  It’s not a secret; the target was high-profile, and a photo of the blood spatter on the wall behind his desk made the national news. 

 

Nat sees it on the TV above the baggage claim as she heaves her suitcase off the conveyer belt.  Apparently there are real crime scene photos now, not just the grainy shots from some night guard’s camera phone.  Nat’s honestly surprised it’s taken so long.  The authorities have had the entirety of the flight from Singapore to LAX.  But everything bureaucratic is slow.  Hell, SHIELD has her flying commercial.  Some reward for not blowing her cover. 

 

It’s midnight, and the rest of the airport patrons move like zombies, trudging to lie across the seats at their connecting gates.  Nat adjusts her fashionably unfashionable glasses and crosses her arms over her NYU sweatshirt while she waits for the single clerk to re-check her bag.  Then she buys a double espresso from the vending machine and spends the whole of her layover sipping it and watching CNN. 

 

By the time she boards the plane to New York at 4:00, the FBI is involved.  Someone finally looks at the dickwad’s computer, and a different set of photos splash up behind the news desk, ones that have a lot more blurred out than the pictures of red spray and crumbles of drywall.

 

Nat left all the tabs open on his computer after she’d completed her mission, but there’s a reason she pulled a few pages to the front.   _Suspected sex trafficker felled_  plays out better in the news cycle than  _assassinated diplomat_ , even if his politics are suspicious in themselves.  As soon as she gets to her seat, Nat pulls out her laptop and hacks the airline’s wifi.  Then she puts in her earbuds and settles in for the ride. 

Nat deplanes at LaGuardia a little after noon.  She’s still alert despite the sleepless night, and maybe a little jumpy.  Turbulence and underhanded satisfaction have turned the coffee in her stomach to froth that rises higher toward her chest with every step.  She sees Happy standing at the other end of the terminal with sign reading  _Rushman_ , but she doesn’t quicken her pace. 

 

“You wanna wait out the lunch hour rush?  Grab a burger or something while we’re here?”  Happy looks hopefully toward the food court. 

 

“Nah.”  Nat could use something with protein, but her throat’s tight with the beginnings of nausea.  She’d rather wait till she’s somewhere more private to find out if it’s the kind that gets better or worse with the addition of food.  “I’d rather just go home.”

 

Happy leaves the partition down for the drive upstate.  Nat’s a quiet passenger, so it’s probably meant to be a perk.  She could do without hearing him sing along with the oldies station, though. 

 

The radio goes to a commercial break, and Nat zones out watching telephone poles blur past her window.  She feels like a child dragged along on some summer road trip, despite the fact that it’s October and rainy.  She never went on vacations as a child.  She was separated from normal folks.  Warehoused.  Exploited. 

 

“Have you heard this?”  Happy twiddles the volume.  A reporter’s monotone reads the latest headlines.  Apparently the scum on the office computer was just the tip of the iceberg compared to what was living on his hard drive at home.

 

“No,” Nat says, ignoring the bitter taste creeping onto her tongue.  “I haven’t.”  Call it instinct or just plain luck.  She isn’t supposed to have emotion toward her targets, but she’s glad this guy is dead. 

There’s another news check an hour later.  Two more politicians arrested.  A woman found chained up in a basement. 

 

They interrupt the music when it comes out that she’s underage.  Every accusation now has  _child_  in front of it, making it all a thousand times worse.  Happy pauses at a stop sign and stares at the radio, his mouth slightly open. 

 

Nat breathes out slowly.  She knows her face is stony.  She’s had plenty of practice hiding visceral reactions, but she still feels like she could throw up. 

 

They’re only down the block from the facility, but Nat can’t wait.  She deftly disengages the child lock and opens her door.

 

“What?”  Happy whips his head around.  “Sorry.  We’re almost there.”

 

“I’ll walk,” Nat says before slamming it shut.  She cuts across the grass so Happy can’t tail her like an overprotective father.  Or something a hell of a lot creepier.

 

There’s nothing wrong with Happy.  He’s professional.  Nat doesn’t have a problem with any of the guys on the team.  She dated Bruce.  She fucked Clint.  But she doesn’t think she can handle being near a man right now.  Nat wraps her arms around her torso, trying not to cringe at her own touch.

 

She jogs through the facility’s entryway and goes straight for the stairs.  Something that sounds like Streetfighter is coming from the living room.  It’s unlikely anyone will come greet her, but Nat sill hurries.  She only pauses when she’s outside the door to her room, her breath coming a little quicker than she likes. 

 

What’s she going to do when she gets in there?  Throw herself facedown on the bed and cry?  Turn on the news again?  If she slows down, the wave of feeling is going to crash into her and drag her beneath the surface.

 

Nat steps past her door and goes to Jess’s instead.  Jess has weed and whiskey.  Usually vodka, too.  Nat never asked her to start stocking her preferred poison, but after a while, the clear bottles joined the amber-colored ones on the shelf in Jess’s closet. 

 

Nat barges in without knocking.  Jess sits on her bed, filing her nails and ignoring a rerun of Gilmore Girls.  It seems preposterous that ordinary life is still moving along, but to the rest of the facility’s inhabitants, it’s just another afternoon.

 

“Hey.”  Jess looks up.  She smiles for an instant, then her brows knit and her face falls.  “You ok?” 

 

“Yeah.”  Nat notices the open bottle and the glass on the bedside table.  Just another afternoon indeed.  It doesn’t matter that she doesn’t like Jess’s Jack Daniels much.  She’ll take anything. 

 

Nat reaches for the alcohol.  A pang of something she doesn’t want to process hits her in the gut.  She’s going to make herself sick if she drinks, but Nat doesn’t care.  She already feels dirty.

 

“Whoa, hold up.”  Jess hooks her fingers in the back pocket of Nat’s jeans, somehow pulling and pushing at the same time.  It’s a playful touch.  And tender.  And sweet and casual and intimate all at once. 

 

Jess doesn’t ask Nat questions after missions.  She’s perceptive enough to answer most of them on her own, and she knows Nat doesn’t need platitudes for her to show she cares.  It’s sexier that Jess eschews them all together. 

 

And when Nat drags her eyes away from the bottle and locks them on Jess’s lower lip instead, that’s what rushes through her mind.  It would take only the slightest movement to pull away, probably less effort in the long run.  But she stays still, and it’s too late.  The pendulum reaches the top of the arc and swings the other way, leaving  _I am an island_  behind and rushing full-force into  _touch-a touch-a touch me_.  The line between love and filth blurs, and Nat’s hands find their way around Jess’s waist.  Neither of them are any good at talking.  So they just kiss.

 

Nat’s glasses hit the floor first.  She breathes into Jess’s mouth, and they stumble backward toward the bed.  They part long enough for Jess to pull her shirt over her head, then they fall, side by side. 

 

Jess pushes a piece of hair off Nat’s cheek.  She slides the hem of her sweatshirt up to her armpits.  Nat keeps her arms in the sleeves.  She’s still cold, and it hardly matters.  She’s not wearing a bra anyway. 

 

Jess inches closer until Nat can feel the tickle of the hair on her bikini line against the flat of her stomach, and they kiss again.  One of Jess’s palms flutters against Nat’s spine, the other on her ribcage.  If she stays in this moment and thinks only about the touch, she’s almost warm.  Almost floating. 

 

But Nat can only last so long.  The little breaths of Jess she draws in through her nose keep her from drowning, but her lungs begin to ache, then her stomach, and her chest.  Nat pulls her head back and coughs, spit flying from her lips. 

 

Jess is panting too, and laughing.  Nat hacks again.  Pinpricks of sweat break out across her forehead and behind her knees.  The magic of the moment turns to dust and falls out of the air.  The room feels stark and empty.  Nat feels exposed. 

 

She struggles to unhook her leg from Jess’s and throw herself in the direction of the ensuite.  Instinct sends her hand over her mouth even though logic tells her there’s nothing for her to throw up.  Nat goes down hard on her knees in front of the toilet, the dizziness as strong as the nausea.  She retches a couple of times and chokes on ropes of mucous and bile. 

 

Nat’s situationally aware enough to track Jess through a few seconds of confusion and hasty re-dressing, but the sudden presence behind her still catches her off guard.  She jumps, and her shoulders shoot up toward her ears just as another dry heave wracks her frame.

 

“Ok,” Jess hums.  She gathers Nat’s hair in a low ponytail and lifts it off her neck.  She rubs circles below the collar of Nat’s sweatshirt and waits till she’s done sputtering.

 

“Sorry,” Nat chokes.  Her body’s confused again, threatening to reject Jess’s care in the name of self-defense.  She reaches blindly for the toilet paper roll.  Jess makes to help her, but Nat whispers, “I’ll do it.”

 

“Ok.”  Jess’s hand falls away, but she stays where she is, solid and warm behind Nat’s back.  “I’m sorry if I…  Is it like a headache, or something?” 

 

Nat does have a headache now, but she’s not going to admit to anything.  She should be fine.  So she is fine.  She shrugs and wipes her mouth.

 

“Ok.”  Jess sighs.  “I know we don’t talk.  But…”  She pauses and smooths out the ends of Nat’s curls.  “But it doesn’t have to be like that.  If you don’t want it to.”

 

Nat takes her time dropping the tissue into the toilet bowl.  She flushes and listens to the water rush and the tank refill.  “It’s just…stuff in Singapore,” she finally says.  Nat chooses her words carefully.  “There was more to it than I thought.”

 

“Did someone hurt you, or—”

 

“No.”  Nat says it so quickly it sets her off coughing again.  She breathes through a swell of nausea and whispers, “No, I’m ok.”

 

“You don’t have to lie.”  It’s a line that would normally come out of Jess’s mouth tinged with attitude, but her voice remains gentle and steady, and that holds as much meaning as the words do.  Maybe more.  “But you don’t have to talk about it either.”

 

Nat’s training drives her to do the right thing for the situation, not the right thing in general.  Higher standards of morality are fickle in her line of work, and any innate sense of justice is buried under a set of conditioned responses.  Following orders comes first.  Loyalty comes second.  Self-preservation third.  Everything else can compete for the bottom spots on the list.

 

If she was a normal person with a normal bad day at the office, she’d tell Jess about it.  Maybe they’d go running.  Or grab takeout.  Or get stoned and make love in front of stupid daytime TV.  None of the options will work because nothing about the situation is normal. 

 

Nat can’t lean on Jess; she only knows how to pedal in tandem.  If a person around her, even a friend or a partner, vanishes, she has to keep going alone.  It’s how she was raised, to be fully self-sufficient, but not independent.  She isn’t supposed to make her own choices.  She isn’t supposed to care.  

 

Bile rises in Nat’s throat again.  She isn’t supposed to be doing this, either.  She swallows hard and murmurs, “Sorry.”

 

“I don’t care one way or the other.  And the offer’s not gonna expire,” Jess says.  “I just care about you.  I care that you’re ok.  We can chat later.  If you want.”

 

“You’ll hear it if you turn on the news.”  Nat shakes her head.  “I’ll stop being such a mess about it.”

 

“I’ll catch the news tonight.  How about we stay at right now, ok?”  Jess squeezes Nat’s shoulder and slowly trails her hand down her arm.  “You’re not a mess.  You’re a human being.” 

 

When Jess gets to Nat’s wrist, Nat interlaces their fingers.  Jess is right.  Even if she’s spent the better part of three decades convincing herself otherwise, it’s still the truth.  “Yeah,” Nat whispers.  “I guess.”


End file.
